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Managed-care company to bring about 80 jobs to University City

Cardinal Innovations Healthcare Solutions will create roughly 80 jobs in Mecklenburg County when it opens its new service center in University City later this year.

Based in Kannapolis, Cardinal Innovation is a managed-care company for those with mental health, intellectual disability and substance use/addiction issues in the Piedmont region. It has four community operations centers across central North Carolina – its Medicaid managed-care plan covers roughly 225,000 enrollees in 15 counties – and the service center will be its first location in Mecklenburg County.

The 25,865-square-foot facility opening at 10150 Mallard Creek Road will primarily handle customer service management, claims processing, operational reporting and technology support, according to company officials.

Chief Administrative Officer Steve Timmons said the company spent about four months considering possible service center locations statewide.

University City was attractive for a number of reasons, Timmons said, including ease of transportation, proximity to UNC Charlotte, the population of desirable employees and the facility itself.

Located in a multilevel building, the floor that Cardinal Innovations has leased was previously a mortgage broker’s office. Cardinal is in the process of getting permits to remodel the space, Timmons said.

The center will likely open at the end of July or the beginning of August, Timmons said, but operations will begin much sooner.

The primary workforce will be based in Kannapolis, and Cardinal will also have a temporary workspace in the same University City building. “Not on the same floor, we don’t want to delay construction,” Timmons said, but that workspace could be operating as soon as April 1.

Hiring for the service center will begin in late February and early March. Positions include customer service management; contract, enrollment and quality specialists; claims managers, supervisors and specialists; and various analysts, auditors, IT support workers and human resources support workers.

All jobs will be posted in the “Career” section of Cardinal’s website, Timmons said. Each position will have a different set of prerequisite skills, and each new hire will go through a training period.

After recently signing a contract to oversee MeckLINK’s mental health, intellectual disability and substance use/addiction services, Cardinal Innovation has also started the search for a future community operations center location “in the core of Charlotte,” Timmons said.

Officials hope to identify a location and have the community operations center opened at the same time as the University City service center, if not sooner, Timmons said.

The community operations center is key for the service Cardinal provides and will create 70-75 additional jobs, according to Timmons.

“We’ll be taking on many of the MeckLINK employees currently handling behavioral health, but they won’t fill all the jobs,” he said, estimating they’ll still need to fill upward of 30 positions.

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